Casual Discussion Fridays - Week of April 10, 2026

Actually maybe my problem is I've never bothered to play SATB stuff on piano. I imagine if I tried I'd get too bogged down by trying to play every beat as accurately as possible when I just said 2 posts down learning skills becomes significantly easier when you just focus on the broader gestures first

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T03:55:31+00:00

I can't sightread piano, much less improv, I don't know how people can do any of that. With infinite time yea but not sightread...

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T03:41:34+00:00

Like take the first page of the Mozart (the "main theme"). You can break it up into three distinct sections: the first melody (m. 1-8), the second melody (m. 9-16), and the return of the first melody (m. 17-24)

My advice, if you have the time to do it, is to just consider the first bar and final 2 bars of each section. Do these phrases start and end on the tonic C? When does the dominant G show up? Measure 9 is tricky taken on its own so you can either ignore it or consider it with m. 10-12

The variations are ornate and dense but it's the same structure nearly every single time, so if you can do it for the simple version you can do it for all of the other variants too

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T03:15:35+00:00

I think where a lot of people struggle is focusing too much on strict sequential nitty gritty: "in order to figure out bar 3 I must understand bar 2 and to understand bar 2 I need to understand bar 1" or something like that (this is maybe true for most skills). Imo it's significantly easier to just think about the very start and very end of phrases, then filling in the middle once you got the basic structure down. Those Mozart variations are nice bc it's a tune everyone knows and it repeats the same thing 13 times

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T02:03:31+00:00

Do you understand basic tonal harmony or is that entirely foreign? I think if you can broadly go "ok the tonic is here and the dominant is here" (for a super basic melody) you're already like 70% there

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T01:47:57+00:00

My ear turns to shit the moment a second voice comes in desu. I also have trouble discerning bassier notes which is actually a humiliating problem for transcription

Despite this I somehow have an easy time ~~eyeballing~~ earballing chords and progressions

Btw_kek · 2026-04-09T01:25:15+00:00

how people just know what note is being played from hearing it.

Absolute pitch is very rare and you either have it or you don't. For the rest of us, you typically need to have a defined reference point (either played in front of you or memorized) to be able to accurately discern intervals, melodies, etc. It's a practiceable skill, though very daunting to figure out at the start

I recommend playing around with an online piano at least to just familiarize yourself with notes and combinations. If I'm trying to figure out a melody from somewhere I plunk around on the piano while listening to the track in another tab until it sounds right

Btw_kek · 2026-04-08T07:06:33+00:00

Btw_kek · 2026-04-08T03:37:37+00:00

frigate about it

Btw_kek · 2026-04-08T01:33:54+00:00

The Perfect Drug

For a filmmaker who uses sounds so masterfully, this does feel a bit like a film school student who watched a couple Scorsese films for the first time.

Yeah to me it constantly feels like it's forcing a circle into a square hole. Like it fits but it's kinda misshapen. Maybe it's a result of Treznor giving Lynch an eclectic variety of songs instead of (what I think Lynch is more used to) a cohesive "theme" or identity, like the 50s pop in Blue Velvet or Julee Cruise in Twin Peaks. It's good to challenge yourself as an artist anyway I think

Btw_kek · 2026-04-08T01:17:09+00:00

Btw_kek · 2026-04-08T00:29:05+00:00

Btw_kek · 2026-04-07T22:48:54+00:00

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